Family wanted him to leave life of crime

His family kept pleading with him to switch tracks and start a new life far, far away for half a decade but the mastermind of the brazen Defence Colony heist, executed by five armed men last week, skirted their plea every single day.

The South Delhi police on Wednesday had arrested the alleged mastermind of the sensational Rs. 5.25 crore cash van robbery.

Hari Kishan Sharma, the mastermind, and his wife Rashmi, were arrested from Tindwari town, 200 km east of Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. They were hiding at a relative's house for the last three days after fleeing Delhi.

Born to a wealthy family, Sharma, one of six siblings - three brothers and three sisters - took to a life of crime when his eldest brother fraudulently sold a family bungalow in south Delhi's posh Vasant Vihar area and fled with the money.

"All three of his sisters were married and settled Leicestershire, London. While one of them was married to a lawyer, another had a construction contractor for a husband," said an investigating officer.

Citing their settled family lives overseas, the sisters, tried every trick in the book to cajole Sharma away from the bad company.

One of them, who flew back to Delhi with her husband and two children before settling down in south Delhi's RK Puram in 2006, successfully coaxed him into driving a school cab for a living.

"It was on one of these trips when he was dropping his sister's children off at a prominent school in south Delhi that he first set his eyes on Rashmi. An open school student, she had come there to sit for her Class 12 exams," the officer said. Rashmi's family lived in south Delhi.

Meanwhile, sources said they had stumbled upon a seeming intra-family feud while questioning Sharma and his brother Deepak.

Police said they have reasons to believe that both brothers are lying about their share of the loot.

Both brothers, police said, were trying very hard to pin ownership of a substantial amount of the remainder of the robbed Rs. 5.25 crore on each other.

"Sharma's version contradicts Deepak's and vice versa. We have reason to believe that a substantial amount of the loot is stashed at one of their relatives' homes at their behest," the officer added.